


Blood Will Out

by Nokomis



Category: Dexter (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-20
Updated: 2007-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deb just wants her brother to meet her boyfriend. (Set during Season One's Father Knows Best)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood Will Out

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Ilyena_sylph for giving this a look-over!
> 
> Written for Fahye

 

 

It isn't that Rudy _reminds_ her of Dex, because that would be fucking creepy. It's more  
that...

She feels comfortable when she's with him, the way that she does with Dex, only here there's  
sexy times and Rudy doesn't, like, awkwardly hit at her arm when he says something  
complementary, or know what a trainwreck her junior prom was, or any of the Dex-stuff that is  
really only acceptable because he's her brother.

Rudy is _hers_.

*

It was Rudy that suggested dinner. He wants to get to know Dexter better - Deb's beginning to  
get a little suspicious, really, because what guy wanted to have fucking dinner with his new  
girlfriend's brother when he could be at home screwing her goddamn brains out, anyhow?

She doesn't want to think the answer that her father would have given her, because it freaks her  
right the hell out. Debra Morgan just isn't the type of girl who attracted nice guys. She attracts  
married losers and deadbeats, as her entire dating career suggests, but here was this doctor - a  
fucking _doctor_! - who asks about her childhood and wants to meet her family and is, as  
judged by all the questionaires in the Cosmos that she bought specifically for this purpose, a  
genuinely nice guy.

And she can't convince her brother to just meet him, because her brother is a dipshit who doesn't  
get that this is potentially huge.

So when attacking him at work doesn't work, she insists on having lunch together. She's not  
above begging if it comes to that, but she's set on badgering her brother until he caves and sees  
how massively important it is that he meets Rudy.

Dex shows up late.

Her brother comes in two flavors: annoyingly hokey and unerringly odd, and judging from the  
fidgety way he was jingling the change in his pockets, tonight's an odd night. Which was good,  
because really, what if Rudy decided he likes Dex more than Deb when faced with someone who  
isn't a neurotic mess? It had been known to happen before, even if there was no way in hell Deb  
is ever going to tell Dex what really happened with Jake.

Sh really shouldn't be this nervous just asking, as it wasn't like Dex and Rudy would hate each  
other or anything, but things just didn't go good for her, like, ever, and without Dex's approval  
the whole thing might fall flat. She wonders briefly if her father had maybe somehow  
brainwashed her in her sleep back when she was a kid, but the thought of Harry Morgan doing  
anything that subversive was a fucking joke.

"Jesus, why don't you call when you're going to be forever late?" Deb gripes before Dexter can  
even sit down.

"Well, I would have, but seeing as I'm only _three minutes_ late..." her brother says  
smoothly as he makes a show of checking his watch and raising an eyebrow at her. The fucker.

"Whatever, you loser. You are going to meet my boyfriend, and I wanted to lay down the ground  
rules." Her brother was sometimes a moron and she thought it was best to remind him of all the  
things he wasn't supposed to do.

"I haven't agreed to that," he says, taking a sip of his water. "I told you, I'm real busy."

"Don't be an asshole! This is important, I already told you."

Dex's face doesn't change. She knows her brother well enough to recognize when he's just  
humoring her and pretending to care about whatever she's ranting about. Usually, it's something  
trivial enough that she's okay with him spacing - it's not like she listens when he goes on about  
his goddamn bowling team or whatever it is besides Rita that he spends his spare time doing - but  
this is about possibly the best thing to happen in her love life since, well, ever.

"You and Rita are alright, right? Nothing wrong there?" she tries.

"What? No, we're fine. Same as ever,"he says quickly.

"Then why are you being such a freak-face weirdo about meeting my boyfriend?" she demands.  
She's a big believer in directness.

"Um." He looks taken aback. Good.

"Come on, big bro! You've got to come with me."

Dexter mumbles something about prior commitments - bullshit, Deb knows, because her brother  
was the most boring person on earth and besides, she's already told him he should bring Rita  
along.

Deb isn't going to let her brother weasel his way out of this one. Not when Rudy feels so  
important to her.

*

There's this way that Rudy smiles at her, like he knows her every secret but isn't repulsed, that  
makes butterflies flutter in her stomach in a way Deb hasn't felt since she was in high school  
gazing at Charlie What's-his-face in biology class and scratching their initials into her lab table's  
scarred surface.

She can't say it out loud, because there's now way for a grown ass woman to say something like  
that without sounding retarded, but that's the best part of this whole thing.

"Do you remember not having a brother?"

Deb squishes the pillow over her face and says loudly, "Can't this wait til morning?"

"Of course," Rudy says, but she's a cop's daughter and she knows how to hear disappointment in  
someone's voice. She rolls over and peeks out from under the floppy corner of the pillow case.

"Not really. I mean, I was tiny when Dad brought Dex home, so it's like he's always been there. I  
can't imagine life without him."

"I'd say that would be difficult to picture," Rudy said, words measured oddly.

"I mean... you're an only child, right? So you don't know what it's like having a big brother. He  
drives me crazy and is always doing stupid things that he thinks is supposed to help and never do,  
but he's my big brother and God, I couldn't sound more like a fucking greeting card if I tried."  
Deb smashes the pillow back down over her face, taking a deep breath of hot, thin air.

There's this pause, and for a second she thinks this might be it, this is when it all falls to shit, but  
instead he just laughs.

"That's sweet, really," Rudy says, and he's totally fucking mocking her, and she hits him with  
her pillow.

"Shut the hell up, cocksucker," she says, not able to keep the smile off her face. "You're the one  
who asked stupid fucking Hallmark questions."

"I was just... curious. About you. Him. Your lives," he says, and it's completely unguarded and  
open and he's staring at her with this intent expression that she hasn't really seen before.

"I've already told you. I don't have any weird childhood trauma, so you don't have to worry  
about me cracking like a nut," she says, grinning and miming stabbing at his heart. "Like the  
freaks we sometimes deal with at work. They make anyone feel better about themselves."

Rudy laughs. "Anything that gets you through the night, right?"

"That's right," Deb laughs.

"You know what else gets me through the night?" Rudy says, leaning in for a kiss.

"Well, I mean, we're already _up_ ,"Deb says, running her hand down the smooth muscular  
planes of his stomach. "Might as well do something about that."

She's a little surprised to find him already hard, and he grabs her wrist, pulling her hand away as  
he kisses her and twists on top of her, pressing her into the mattress.

Rudy does this thing, sometimes, that Deb thinks probably has to do with his job so she doesn't  
really bring it _up_. Since she doesn't really mind, since she'd had weirder boyfriends by  
far, and it isn't even really a _kink_....

He would touch her in measured, precise strokes. Her legs, her arms, all her extremities would  
get these reverent strokes with his fingertips, in straight lines all the way around. She wonders if  
he's sometimes surprised, given what he sees everyday, that someone could have unmutilated  
flesh, the same way she sometimes forgot that there were people in the world who aren't just  
criminals or victims.

She doesn't tease him about it the way she does everything else, because there's something  
unguarded and unconscious about the actions that made her feel like Rudy was showing her a bit  
of his soul, fucking stupid as that sounded, and she isn't about to fuck that up.

*

The funny part is, she spends all this time trying to get Dex to meet Rudy, and here they all are,  
staying in Dexter's fucking _biological father's_ house and she's in such a fucking snit  
that she doesn't care if they say three words to each other.

Because Dex - after all that shit she was telling Rudy about how they were family no matter  
whether or not he'd been adopted - had gone behind her back and ordered that DNA test. He'd  
doubted their father's word, and hadn't even whispered a word to her about it.

And the worst part was that he'd been _right_.

Their father had lied to him, and Dex had somehow _known_ , and here she is, angry like a  
spoiled little brat because Dexter had family outside of her.

Family that is dead. Dexter is an orphan fucking two times over and _she's_ somehow the  
one screaming in front of everyone.

Rudy tells her that her reaction is natural, that she's going through an understandably emotional  
time, and that so is Dexter. He tries to play Dr. Phil, and Deb hates that she finds it so  
reassuring.

Rudy keeps watching Dexter, looking around this house like it somehow holds some strange key  
to who her brother is. To who she is.

And somehow she convinces herself to stop being angry at Dexter because their father  
( _theirs_ , dammit, not just hers) lied about an ex-junkie who may or may not have been  
murdered for, judging by the boring-ass contents our his house, no reason or gain whatsoever.

Harry Morgan had a reason for everything he did, Deb knows. Usually because it's the right  
thing, like when he brought Dexter home and made him part of their family and gave Deb  
someone to lean on. (If he hadn't adopted Dex, she'd be alone.) And sometimes she wonders if  
that was on purpose, if Dad maybe thought that she wouldn't be able to find someone to lean on  
herself.

Maybe she's never found anyone because she has someone so secure to lean on.

She isn't used to having Rudy just yet. Isn't used to feeling safe and loved by someone who  
wasn't a Morgan.

By someone who chose her for her, not because of blood.

*

Deb spends a lot of time holding her breath and trying to not fuck things up, it seems to her  
sometimes.

The rest of the time she just keeps hoping that she is somehow succeeding.

 


End file.
